DPR Defense Ministry: Situation Report, 22.01.2016

Friday, January 22, 2016 - 15:30

Over the past day the situation on the contact line has deteriorated.

The Ukrainian military violated the ceasefire twenty times and shelled the territory of the DPR a hundred and fifty-three times. There were shelled such localities as Zaytsevo, Zhabunky, Staromikhailovka, Alexandrovka, Kominternovo, Belaya Kamenka, Spartak, the area of the airport and Trudovskoy of Donetsk city. Altogether onto the territory of the Republic there were launched forty-four mines of 120mm and 82mm caliber, was made one shot from a tank, eighty-eight shots from hand and automatic grenade launchers and more than twenty-seven shots from infantry fighting vehicles.

The shellings resulted in one military of the DPR Armed Forces killed.

The Ukrainian side keeps carrying out shellings from the localities of the buffer zone. In particular, the Ukrainian military launched five 82mm mines from the seized locality Vodyanoye to the locality Kominternovo. At the same time the representatives of the OSCE mission keep ignoring these facts, giving a tacit support to the Ukrainian military’s provocations.

I would also like to remind you that it is already the fourth day when the residents of Zaytsevo have to freeze in their homes due to the shellings by the Ukrainian military who keep disrupting the restoration works in the locality. Given this fact, we are surprised at cowardice of the representatives of the OSCE mission who are to act as guarantors of security in such cases but, instead, hide behind neighbouring buildings and escape the site of the restoration works at the first opportunity. Thereby they expose working teams to danger while making no attempts to stop shellings by the Ukrainian military.

I also draw your attention to the fact that today in the Republic people are commemorating victims of the tragedy at the trolleybus stop Bosse in Donetsk city where a year ago, in a bloody shelling, the Ukrainian military killed thirteen and wounded twenty civilians. It is one of the facts of the shameful history of new Ukraine that is committing the genocide against the people of Donbass. At the same time, today Ukraine is celebrating the so-called Day of Unity which is to unite the Ukrainians. In fact, now they are being united around the atrocities of the Ukrainian military in Donbass, around the crimes committed by the Ukrainian authorities against their own people. We deeply regret that the Ukrainians are being united by such "values".

Besides, we keep registering new facts of growing the epidemics of acute respiratory infections among the Ukrainian military. Just since the beginning of this week more than 200 Ukrainian military have been taken to civil and military hospitals of Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk. It is important to repeat that the DPR intelligence previously reported the research being carried out in a private laboratory in the locality Shelkostantsiya, 30 km away from the city of Kharkov, and involving US military experts. According to our information, it is there where the deadly Californian flu strain leaked from.